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More Than Meets The Eye

I’ve only been around 20 years, which isn’t a very long time considering how many years I have to come, but regardless of my short while on this earth I know that when it comes to people – there’s always more than meets the eye.

I’m sure we’ve all heard it before – “don’t judge a book by its cover,” “you never know what someone may be going through,” and the list goes on. It’s true though, we are very quick to judge people based on a very underdeveloped opinion we form about them. These opinions often happen in seconds with first impressions and things like that. But why? Why are we so quick to judge when we barely know a person? Well, I’m no sociologist/psychologist/scientist, I’m actually just a pretty naive college student when it comes to most things, but I think in this case I’ve figured it out.

Yes, part of it may be human nature, we pass almost all judgement based on personal observations but there may be more to it than that. I think, as we all walk through life, we find the need to categorize people and in the simplest way we do this between people we “like” and people we “don’t like.” Then, consider this – think about how quick the majority of your interactions are with people in a day. Chances are, the people who you interact with over long periods of time are generally people you “like,” and then with the people you “don’t like” the interaction are kept short to keep you from wasting your time with someone who you simply don’t believe you can get along with.

So going back to what I said in the beginning, there is always more to a person than we think there is, or than they choose to share with you. Though because we’re quick to pass judgement we don’t truly get to know a person past the first impression, especially if that first impression ends up as a “don’t like” situation. This is where we may want to offer some people the benefit of the doubt – if you’ve decided not to like someone, you may be simply deciding not to like the first impression you received from them, and quite frankly that first impression may be wrong. I suggest we give it a try (me included) and get to know those people on a deeper level, not so deep that you’re digging up skeletons in the closet, but I think you get what I mean. Maybe your first impression of this person you quickly decided you “hated” was made on a day this person was going through something really difficult. Or, in my case, maybe this person really hates small talk and simply fails miserably at every initial interaction with a person. Theres more to people than that, and if you take it upon yourself to discover what that “more” is, then your judgement of these people very well may change.